PNGRB Empowered to Frame Regulations: Centre

New Delhi: The Centre told the Delhi High Court that Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) is empowered to frame regulations for the interest of the general public and oil and gas companies are bound to follow them. Defending the Board's decision to slash network tariff and CNG compression charge on sale of piped natural gas (PNG) and CNG, Additional Solicitor General A S Chandhiok said the PNGRB Act empowered the Board to fix transportation tariff. "Under the PNGRB Act, the Board is entitled to frame the regulation for the interest of the general public," the senior law officer told the bench of acting Chief Justice A K Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw. "I am only fixing the transportation tariff and I am not fixing the maximum retail price," the counsel said adding Indraprastha Gas Ltd (IGL) is not the consumer and the benefit of the regulation would not go to the company. The bench was hearing IGL's plea against the order of the PNGRB which has slashed network tariff and CNG compression charge and asked IGL to refund the excess amount charged by it from consumers since 2008. IGL, the sole supplier of PNG and CNG in Delhi and its suburbs, took the ground that the regulator lacked the power to fix network tariff and compression charge for PNG and CNG, which, in any case, cannot be exercised with "retrospective" effect